


The World is Wide (but you are its centre)

by BeautifulSoup



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Introspection, M/M, Shower Sex, The Raven King Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:45:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6886162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeautifulSoup/pseuds/BeautifulSoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Ronan had told Adam once what he needed to pull something from his dreams: he needed the weight of it, the texture, the scent, needed to know it was real and how it would feel when he brought it out into the world. Adam tries to do this with Ronan at every opportunity.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>A snapshot during the days leading up to Adam's departure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World is Wide (but you are its centre)

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I've got a thing about Adam and homes and introspection during sexytimes. Dang. 
> 
> [Come cry with me on tumblr](http://pygmypyncher.tumblr.com/).

 “You brat!” Ronan’s shout immediately following a large crash is enough to pull Adam’s head out of the tractor engine. He’s just in time to see Opal shrieking gleefully as she sprints around the corner towards him. She skids around behind him, laughing breathlessly as she peeks around him as if he’s a wall or a tree.

“What have you done?” He asks, but before she can answer, Ronan comes storming around the corner. Adam tries not to smile, honestly he does.

“I’ll give you three guesses.” Ronan’s expression is thunderous.

Adam presses the back of his hand to his mouth in an attempt to stop his laugh. Opal gives a high, squeaking giggle behind him, her fingers sharp on his hip as she ducks behind him.

The ground around Ronan is slowly turning dark, punctuation at the end of the trail of his footsteps coming around from behind the barn. His shirt is dripping wet, his hair plastered to his head.

“I didn’t feel the rain.” Adam says, failing miserably at keeping a straight face.

“Traitor.” Ronan growls, and runs towards them.

Opal shrieks and spins Adam around as a human shield, keeping him in the firing line. Ronan dives from side to side, reaching out to grab her before she dances back around to Adam’s other side. Adam has never felt quite as much like an inanimate object as he does now. As soon as they’re on opposite sides of him he slips quickly out from between them.

With a betrayed shriek of his name, Opal tries to run, but Ronan catches her around the middle and swings her around. He drops her to her feet and tickles her sides until her legs buckle and she’s just a giggling lump on the ground.

“Think that’s funny, do you?” There’s a fierceness in Ronan’s smile that stops Adam’s heart, just for a moment.

“Kerah!” Opal shouts, gasping as she laughs, her arms thrown out to Adam in a plea for help, her mouth spread in a wide grin. Adam watches them struggle with each other for another moment, letting the image settle and crystallise in his memory before he steps forward and shoves his engine-grease covered finger up Ronan’s nose.

“You _bastard_!” Ronan yells, throwing himself away. “That is _so gross_!” But he’s laughing as he wipes his nose with the back of his hand. Opal stays on the ground, rolling on her back as she tries to regain her breath through her giggles.

Adam approaches Ronan slowly, steadily, and kneels down on the ground beside him. He smiles as Ronan’s breath hitches, as his eyes take in Adam’s deliberate movements. As soon as he’s close enough, he leans in until his nose nearly touches Ronan’s.

Then he smears his dirty hands all over Ronan’s face and laughs as he shouts and rears back.

“Fuck’s sake, Parrish!” But Ronan can barely get the words out through his laughter. “What’s your damage?”

“At first I thought it was a fuel line blockage,” Adam says, smirk stretching his lips, “but I’m starting to think it’s a seal break on the gasket.”

“Smartass.” Ronan growls and reaches for him, catching the front of his overalls. He pulls him down on top of him so they’re both sprawled on the dusty drive. Ronan’s shirt is soaking from whatever prank Opal pulled on him, and Adam can feel it slowly seeping through his overalls. He sighs and lets his weight settle on Ronan despite the creeping dampness. He spreads his hand out over the top of Ronan’s head to feel the squelch of his wet hair. For the last couple of months he’s been letting it grow, and the curl is just making itself evident. Adam’s found that he likes it, although it blurs some of Ronan’s sharp edges.

“So what did she do?” He asks casually, glancing over to watch Opal squawk at Chainsaw.

“Rigged a bucket of water over the door of the equipment shed.” Ronan mutters. Adam snorts. “I blame you.” Ronan’s face is etched in a scowl, but his hands are gentle on Adam’s hips.

“That’s entirely unfair.” Adam says, prodding the tip of Ronan’s nose with his greasy finger. He smiles when it leaves yet another smudge on Ronan’s face.

“You let her watch all that Tom and Jerry Roadrunner shit.” Ronan says, and Adam can’t deny that.

“You’re the one that lets her eat Styrofoam.” Adam points out, arching an eyebrow. “You know it makes her hyper.”

“Fuck you.” Ronan says. Adam kisses him.

“Not in front of the kids.” Adam murmurs, grinning into the kiss as Ronan’s hands slide from his hips to his ass. He nods over to where Opal and Chainsaw are cheerfully ripping up chunks of grass, each cawing their triumph whenever they find a worm or other creepy-crawlies.

“Fuck you.” Ronan says again, but his hands skate up to the dip of Adam’s lower back and settle there, pressing gently and making a thrill pass up Adam’s spine.

As a reply, Adam spreads his hand all over Ronan’s face and uses it to push himself up until he’s sitting with his knees either side of Ronan’s legs. Ronan mutters something that’s smothered by Adam’s palm.

“Gross,” Adam says without heat when he feels Ronan’s tongue against his palm. He pulls his hand back and sits back on Ronan’s legs, watching. “You’re filthy.” Ronan raises a grease-smeared eyebrow at him and doesn’t even bother responding.

They both look up at the sound of footsteps.

“Christ,” Gansey says, dripping exasperation, “we can’t leave you two alone for ten minutes, can we?”

“I think we _should_ leave them alone for ten minutes.” Blue says from beside him, her smile pulled knowingly to one side of her face. “Maybe twenty.”

Gansey makes a noise that sounds physically pained.

“Fuck you both.” Ronan growls, throwing himself back against the ground.

“Congratulations, Adam, on whatever the hell you’ve just won.” Blue steps forward and Adam bumps her knuckles. Ronan’s face is a canvas of smudged black fingerprints and half-faked irritation. Something heavy and warm and solid settles in Adam. He thinks it might be either relief or happiness, but all of them being here at once in the summer warmth is at the root of it.

***

Later, when Blue and Gansey and Henry have gone, Adam’s in the little utility/boot/mud room beside the kitchen scrubbing tractor parts in the large Belfast sink. There’s something a bit off about them, and he knows that they won’t fit into any other tractor in existence. Niall Lynch had had a rough grasp of mechanics, but not enough to completely convince.

“Parrish!”

He hears Ronan’s shout, but can’t lock on to where it’s coming from.

“Get your ass up here!”

He turns slowly as Ronan speaks, and catches the direction. He drops the parts he had been scrubbing in the sink and heads upstairs, peeking in every door he passes. As he reaches the end of the corridor he hears the shower running. He groans, not in the mood for trying to scrub the grime from Opal’s limbs at the moment. He pushes the bathroom door open.

“Fucking finally.” Ronan says looking over his shoulder at him. His face is only a little less grease-smudged than it had been earlier. He is very naked. “You caused this,” he points at his face, “so you can help me get it off.”

Adam swallows and steps into the room, shutting and locking the door behind him. His hands tremble as he unbuttons the top of his overalls and slides them off, trying not to trip on them. Ronan’s clothes are already in a pile in the other corner. He kicks his underwear and shirt on top of them and steps into the shower.

“You are such a shitbag,” Ronan says, and tugs him forward.

Adam will never get tired of kissing Ronan Lynch. The way his mouth is always hungry, the curve of his skull under Adam’s hands, the sharp press of teeth to his bottom lip. Adam sighs into him, lets Ronan back him up against the cold tiles. He sucks in a breath that’s mostly steam as Ronan moves down to suck at his neck.

Adam feels his cheeks flush at the way his moans echo off the tiles, but it seems to urge Ronan on. His hands grip Adam’s hips tighter, his teeth scrape more roughly at his shoulder.

They’re working on a countdown of days, now. Adam tips his head back against the shower wall and lets Ronan wash over him, savouring the way his hands grip his hips, the press of Ronan’s body against his in the slickness of the shower. He tries to learn the shape of Ronan’s skull beneath his fingers, the growing softness of his hair, the heat of his skin.

Ronan had told Adam once what he needed to pull something from his dreams; he needed the weight of it, the texture, the scent, needed to know it was real and how it would feel when he brought it out into the world. Adam tries to do this with Ronan at every opportunity. He tries to memorise the exact way his cheek presses into the pillow when he wakes up, the warm weight of his hand on Adam’s back in the mornings, the soft sound of his bare feet against the kitchen floor.

It’s not just Ronan, either: The scent of the summer air at the Barns; the sweet, warm scent of the sleeping animals; the grain of the wood on the kitchen counters; Opal’s hand small and delicate in his own. Anything he can cling on to.

When he’s away at college, he wants to be able to bring this all back to him whenever he closes his eyes. Ronan’s chin on his shoulder and arms around his waist, the rumble of laughter in his chest vibrating through Adam’s back. Ronan’s breath, warm and smelling like popcorn, the shine of butter on his chin. The sun beating hot on his chest and the grass prickling his back, Opal curled beneath his arm. The roar of the BMW doing donuts in the back field, Gansey and Blue and Henry laughing, the wooden fence rough and warm under Adam’s arms. The way Chainsaw’s claws dig into his shoulder. The signature scent of the Barns that he’s already starting to lose in the weeks he stays here, his nose writing it off as unimportant background information.

He’s never had a home before, not really. Not the kind of home people talk about in grins and in whispers, with longing tinged with the irritation of the familiar. The trailer had never held any of that for him; all it contained in its thin walls was fear. Monmouth Manufacturing is too vast for anything to catch in its brickwork, although he knows how much Gansey wanted him to feel it there. His room in St Agnes is too small, too cheap; it has the bleach-scented aura of a place that knows it is only for passing through. He gets glimpses of it sometimes at 300 Fox Way in amongst the bustle and pungent herbs.

The Barns, though. The Barns creeps under his skin when he’s not paying attention, when he’s too busy laughing at Ronan’s culinary disasters, when he’s trying to stop Opal from devouring the other arm of the couch, when he’s distracted by Ronan’s mouth and hands and the glitter of his eyes in the dark. The air of the place is starting to settle around him, not suffocating like 300 Fox Way sometimes feels, but like a blanket around his shoulders placed by gentle hands.

The hands feel a lot like Ronan’s.

Growing up, Adam had thought that the wistful way people talked of home on the TV and in books was an exaggeration _: Some Scenes Scripted for Dramatic Purposes_. All he had ever wanted was to get as far away from home as he could and never look back. Now, though, he’s starting to feel the tug of it. He wonders if it’s the magic inherent in this place, if living in a dream surrounded by dream-things and a dreamer has woven some kind of spell around him, if he’s somehow trying to draw some of that magic for himself now his veins no longer thunder with it. The whisper of Cabeswater still flutters in his chest sometimes, though, and he knows that isn’t true.

It’s Ronan, he knows, that’s weaving the spell with the simplest of ingredients: warmth, softness, love. And when did Adam ever think those would be three words to describe Ronan Lynch?

His whole body trembles as he calls out Ronan’s name, and he kisses that last ingredient across Ronan’s face. _Love love love_ on his cheeks and his eyelids and his nose.

As Ronan rests his head on Adam’s left shoulder regaining his breath, Adam feels his lips form words against his skin.

“What was that?” He turns his right ear towards Ronan and runs his hands over his back, letting his thumb trail down the lumps of his spine slowly, one by one. He feels Ronan’s sigh more than he hears it.

Ronan kisses his deaf ear, then his temple, cheekbone, nose, mouth. “I’m gonna miss you.” He murmurs, eyes closed. Adam’s hands clutch at his shoulder blades.

“Ronan,” he breathes, takes Ronan’s head in his hands and presses a kiss between his eyebrows. “You know I’m…” He doesn’t know how to finish. _I’m coming back_ and _I’m gonna miss you too_ are both sentiments they’ve been over before and they’re both equally true.

“I _know_ that, dipshit,” Ronan says, petulant, but he’s looking at him now. “Doesn’t mean I’m not gonna miss you.” He nudges his nose against Adam’s, catches his upper lip between his own. Adam shudders against him.

“I’ll visit.” Adam says, eyes on Ronan’s as his words ghost against his lips. “You’ll hardly know I’m gone.”

The last part’s a lie and they both know it, but Ronan doesn’t argue. He just touches every inch of Adam he can reach.

It’s probably the longest shower Adam’s ever had in his life. He doesn’t question the seemingly never-ending hot water, doesn’t question the seemingly never-ending stream of love flowing from the sharp, broken, healing boy in front of him.

He isn’t sure when it happened, but he’s starting to realise that now when he thinks _Home_ it sounds like _Ronan_.


End file.
